A friend and I were talking about time playing wow together, started waxing nostalgic and decided that we're going try playing again. I quit shortly before Cataclysm launched, and he quit about halfway through wotlk.

First of all, we were thinking of making throwaway trial accounts to try to contact some of our old in-game friends and get some fun scroll of resurrection bonuses, but I was wondering, if I were to get a scroll of resurrection cast on me, would I be able to turn around and cast another one on him? Or would he need to get the bonus from someone else?

Secondly, and I'm not sure if this is quite the way to put this, but how exactly does MoP feel compared to wotlk? I glanced through Wowhead's patch 5.0 survival guide, and read through some of the FAQ's in the basic training section, so I think I might have a basic idea as to some of the paladin-specific changes.

For example, in WotLK tanking and healing were all about having high effective health, saving cooldowns for the high-damage phases of fights, and healer's were limited mostly by needing high healing-per-second to keep up with damage intake during these phases. I never played MoP, but I remember dev posts talking about how they were intentionally making healer mana a limiting factor, and tanks would need to focus on avoidance rather than EH to prevent healers from going oom.

How have some of the game design paradigms or goals changed with MoP?

On a somewhat related note: How is the monk class? I kind of want to try out something new, but I don't really want to blow the extra cash on buying MoP right away, in case I decide that I don't want to keep playing after all.

Courage not of this earth in your eyesFaith from far beyond lies deep inside

In Wrath we tried to cover the combat table with dodge/parry/block before the fight started, then as you say, saved our goodies for the big damage. In panda, we can't come close to covering the combat table, and there's an extra roll in it anyway. Instead, we keep up Sacred Shield and use our holy power primarily to increase our block. We basically have little mitigation until we do something to have mitigation. This is the "Active mitigation" model.

One big deal is that we no longer only block physical damage, but ALL damage.

We have lots of cooldowns and use them in addition to our active mitigation to survive spike damage.

The basic choices are to stack mastery, giving you more mitigation when you mitigate, or haste, which lets you have higher uptime on a lower amount of mitigation.

Effective health doesn't seem very godlike anymore - bosses in norms at least don't seem to hit all that hard, so once you get a nice health pool you don't need to obsess about health.

The overall game feels quite a lot more grindy than Wrath ever did. I am sure you recall getting Sons of Hodir rep in order to get enchants? Well, there are now several factions that need to be ground via dailies in order to unlock items to buy with your valour badges, which come quite slowly. Gearing a main can seem like a full-time job. Gearing an alt as well is like moonlighting as well.

Monks are a lot of fun. I have only done Mistweaver (healer) on mine. They are massively powerful while leveling - you pull the entire village and sift through the smoldering corpses for the quest drops - not unlike a pally tank. When doing straight healing, they are a dual-resource healing class (mana and Chi), which is a bit of a turn-off for me. I like the Shaman/Druid single-resource model better.

Arnock wrote:First of all, we were thinking of making throwaway trial accounts to try to contact some of our old in-game friends and get some fun scroll of resurrection bonuses, but I was wondering, if I were to get a scroll of resurrection cast on me, would I be able to turn around and cast another one on him? Or would he need to get the bonus from someone else?

That should work.

Arnock wrote:Secondly, and I'm not sure if this is quite the way to put this, but how exactly does MoP feel compared to wotlk? I glanced through Wowhead's patch 5.0 survival guide, and read through some of the FAQ's in the basic training section, so I think I might have a basic idea as to some of the paladin-specific changes.

For example, in WotLK tanking and healing were all about having high effective health, saving cooldowns for the high-damage phases of fights, and healer's were limited mostly by needing high healing-per-second to keep up with damage intake during these phases. I never played MoP, but I remember dev posts talking about how they were intentionally making healer mana a limiting factor, and tanks would need to focus on avoidance rather than EH to prevent healers from going oom.

How have some of the game design paradigms or goals changed with MoP?

Tanking is very different, in a good way. It is a lot more similar to playing a dps role - executing your rotation properly will increase your survivability by a significant amount. If you ever tanked on a Death Knight, it is a bit like that for every tanking class now. We all have short cooldowns that cost resources that you build by doing your DPS rotation properly in addition to the old big tank cooldowns á la Shield Wall. Paladins have excellent self healing via Seal of Insight and it is totally viable to stack haste for more holy power generation. Building threat is much less of an issue as well.

The main difference this expansion is that you have a lot of things to do at max level. A LOT. Millions of dailies, pet battles, very accessable raiding throgh LFR, scenarios, etc etc. It might feel overwhelming and especially the dailies may seem mandatory for character progression but they really are not. The reputation model is more similar to what we had in Burning Crusade (tabards are merely a cosmetic vanity item at exalted) and you actually have to work to get them maxed. You gear up linearly via heroic dungeons -> Looking for Raid. It takes more effort to cap Valor than in Cataclysm but there are also way more ways get Valor - if you want you can just quest to your valor cap every week.

Arnock wrote:On a somewhat related note: How is the monk class? I kind of want to try out something new, but I don't really want to blow the extra cash on buying MoP right away, in case I decide that I don't want to keep playing after all.

If I were you, I'd try playing whatever you played before you quit. Paladins are a lot more fun feel and very different compared to even Cataclysm. Good luck!

Brewmasters are great - at least while levelling; I haven't reached max level with mine yet. They and blood DKs are the purest examples of "active mitigation" - you have to take lots of actions to manage your health and its a very lively, fun playstyle. Paladin, warrior and druid tanks feel rather more basic and can feel a little staid to play, in comparison. However, in pure power terms, paladin tanks are top of the heap imo.

I'd definitely encourage you to try both a brewmaster and a blood DK, just to see how tanking has evolved from "stand in front of the boss and get pummeled".

The main differences of MoP from Wotlk in the end game are that Looking for Raid rather than 5 mans are the main focus of activity, aside from "proper" raiding. Personally, I find LFR more fun than repeating 5 mans, but it has it's downsides (24 random folk you have to get along with). There was a heavy emphasis on dailies (for rep to get valor gear) when MoP launched, that caused much wailing and gnashing of teeth. But in the current tier you get rep by doing the current tier raid (inc. LFR) and don't need to do dailies so slavishly (you may still want to do some to get coins to get a second chance of rolling for loot).

A friend just sent me a scroll of resurrection the other day and I installed the game and loaded up. You know what my biggest hangup is? The base UI is still trash and I really do not want to spend hours setting up a custom UI. There are several things I tend to take for granted in games lately, such as an all in one bag window or a sort button.

I like the sound of the direction that tanking went. I did play a blood DK from Wrath through Cata so I was quite used to the active mitigation model and enjoyed it.

Sadly I think for me WoW joins the ranks of UO and EQ. Great memories but games I will never truly enjoy playing again.

You can get Valor from daily quests, scenarios, random dungeons, challenge modes, LFR, and good ol' boss kills. 1000 VP weekly cap, 3000 VP hard cap. It does take some work to cap every week.

You can spend it on various items, which also require some reputation with a faction. The items form 5.0 and 5.1 were not switched to Justice Points but their VP cost was lowered. (-50% and -25% respectively)

However remember that PvP gear will be ilvl 476 in the patch, meaning you can only boost yourself so much with it.

theckhd wrote:Fuck no, we've seen what you do to guilds. Just imagine what you could do to an entire country. Just visiting the US might be enough to make the southern states try to secede again.

halabar wrote:Noo.. you don't realize the problem. Worldie was to negative guild breaking energy like Bolvar is to the Scourge. If Worldie is removed, than someone must pick up that mantle, otherwise that negative guild breaking energy will run rampant, destroying all the servers.

Chunes wrote:One interesting thing to note in the gear progression at endgame is that it's totally viable to spend a day or three grinding the honor pvp gear as a means to bootstrap yourself up into LFR.

They changed pvp gear so that the pvp stats don't count towards iLvl budget, so they're actually pretty decent as a means to get yourself into the LFR scene faster than through grinding heroics.

Or if you have the resources, buy the crafted PVP gear. It is pretty cheap now overall.

Amirya wrote:... because everyone needs a Catagonskin rug.

twinkfist wrote:i feel bad for the Mogu...having to deal with alcoholic bears.

Arnock wrote:So, how exactly does the whole "Valor point" system work?

It's rather like Wotlk in that they've gone back to the "daily heroic" idea, in that you get double VPs for the first 5 man you run (and also the first scenario). It's quite a drag to cap out your valor if you are not killing many raid bosses (as sadly, my guild is not) and probably a drag if you are.

I tend to cap my main's 1000 valor by:

(a) 4 x 90 from LFR(b) 2 x 40 from raid boss kills(c) 4 x 120 from a daily heroic and scenario(b) the odd daily if I want to (e.g. Temple of the White Tiger)

It's not too bad, I guess but leave me too exhausted to try to get valor on any of my alts. This is partly because ToT LFR is time consuming - I only manage one a night.

Also, how is healing different from where it was in wotlk?

I don't know much about healing, but my impression is that they have made it much more varied and fun than in wotlk. In wotlk, paladins had a big heal and a little heal - now they have vastly more tools. I really like healing on my disc priest - choosing between shielding, atonement and raid healing etc; I tend to mix it up and find it a lot of fun.

I think you have to manage your mana, but I don't think it's like early Cata when mana was such a constraint, you would not try to keep people topped up.

The good thing about starting Mists now is you will have missed the worst of the grindfest that dailies were. You might choose to do some still to gear up, but, LFR and world bosses will be a better route now since so many LFR wings will be available to you once you hit a certain gear level.

There are a TON more things to do outside of raid depending on what you enjoy. Pet battles, archeology, dailies, rares to farm, etc.

As long as you aren't pandaphobic like a few of the old farts here, Mists overall is quite good.

Just don't burn yourself out on dailies.

Amirya wrote:... because everyone needs a Catagonskin rug.

twinkfist wrote:i feel bad for the Mogu...having to deal with alcoholic bears.

changing the run thing to only needing 50 instead of 90 to get runes makes it much less of a pain. you really only have to do dailies for one day...then you can goof off or whatever. i like that change.

The LFRs can be a clusterfuck, or can be as smooth as glass, all depends on when you run them and what 24 people you get grouped with. 50% percent of it is just the tanks knowing the fights, so if you are tanking, you can help the success right there.

Best advice on LFR is to run it Tues-Thurs if you can, the weekend can get iffy, but you can still get good groups then too.

Amirya wrote:... because everyone needs a Catagonskin rug.

twinkfist wrote:i feel bad for the Mogu...having to deal with alcoholic bears.

There are a few things in the new raid in LFR where people have to have a semblance of an idea of what to do, but other than that mechanics are fairly optional.

(Except for tanks. They need to know mechanics on most things.)

... the fact that more potential voters are swayed by a few trivial comments 10 years ago than a candidate literally collapsing is not a good sign and tends to indicate that even if Trump wins, it won't matter.

No electorate that stupid is going to survive long, one way or another.

Arnock wrote:How do lfr resets work with standard raids? Can you do both lfr and normals?

Have they nerfed xp gain at all since cataclysm launched? I remember after 4.0 launched xp gain was insane, I tried leveling an alt, and I was abandoning most of the quests due to them turning gray.

you can do LFR and normals in the same week. You can even run LFR multiple times for the VP you get for finishing a wing, or the extra rolls if you have the tokens.

The level of XP given is still pretty high at lower levels, if you want to experience the new leveling content 'as intended', I'd not use heirlooms outside of maybe dungeons or for blasting through outlands/northrend. Gathering professions give XP now when you pick/mine nodes, so that also accelerates things a bit, and if you are in a guild with the XP perk, that will be a pretty decent base boost. I think the only change since cata has been to reduce the XP needed to hit levels 60-80 (maybe through 85?).

Monks also get a daily for a 1 hr XP buff, but you don't have to do that.

If you level guildless, no heirlooms, no XP potion (there's some BoA pot that gives an xp boost for like an hour, but it's a world drop), no RAF etc, you'll still not be able to finish the quests in most zones due to outleveling them.

A buddy of mine and I decided to do every single quest in hyjal for lols, we were like 83 when we finished. Lower levels are even worse.

Arnock wrote:So, how exactly does the whole "Valor point" system work?

It's rather like Wotlk in that they've gone back to the "daily heroic" idea

Yes and no. Valor are reward from every dungeon finder group. First of the day rewards double valor. According to GC when they switched to first 7 of the week from one a day fewer people did it than previously so this splits the difference where people who do it daily get a bonus while chain runners get some every time.

A buddy of mine and I decided to do every single quest in hyjal for lols, we were like 83 when we finished. Lower levels are even worse.

I seem to remember getting to 83, or at least high 82, in Hyjal at Cataclysm launch.

We live in a society where people born on third base constantly try to steal second, yet we expect people born with two strikes against them to hit a homerun on the first pitch.